Tuesday, June 7, 2011

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Summer is my absolute favorite time of the year. Bring on the heat, the sun, the longer days, and the festivals and fun! One of my favorite things about our apartment is the awesome balcony we have created. It's our first balcony and boy are we making use of it!

We bought the side table and chairs the moment we signed our lease because we were that excited for our balcony! We eat dinner out here most evenings and love watching the neighborhood kids practice their skateboarding tricks every afternoon.

It's also a great retreat from our warm apartment (we haven't turned on our air conditioner yet) once the temperatures cool at night and the perfect spot to watch summer thunderstorms.

Our vegetables are growing like crazy and the cayenne peppers have little white flowers. John keeps checking the carrots sure that they are ready to eat but they still have about a month left of incubation. On the left are our bell peppers that I can hardly wait for.

As you can see, I got a little zealous with my basil seed planting and now our basil has taken over our entire garden....we have 25 individual basil plants. If anyone has any delicious basil recipes, please share. We've been eating lots of basil and mushroom pizza and will be making some pesto in the next week or so.

There are also some flowers dispersed here and there - marigolds and alyssum. They haven't started blooming yet but I can't wait until there is some color mixed in with the sea of green.

Don't forget to pass along those basil recipes! I'm off to enjoy the sunrise while sipping on my coffee out on the balcony.

It's nice to relive the memories of your lovely balcony. I hope the kids are getting better with their skateboard tricks. Leslie made a basil chicken stir-fry that was really good. It might be this one (minus the fish sauce of course) http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/thai-chicken-with-basil-stir-fry/Detail.aspx

Your balcony looks wonderful. My first apartment long, long, long, long ago had a balcony and I loved sitting on it. This brought back wonderful memories. I didn't know you could have too much basil! Love the stuff! I'll post some recipes for you! Thanks for visiting and your sweet comments!